Low employee engagement costs companies $450-500 billion each year. This is not new. The employees sometimes tend to be self-surrounded. This can lead to miss communication, hesitation, and more.
Furthermore, A recession is a challenging time for most people. In an organization, employees create fear unconsciously. The fear of not generating profit, laying off, pay cuts, etc., makes the employees anxious.
However, the HR leaders are creative and came up with a good solution for employee engagement during a recession. With the help of HR software in Bangladesh, employee engagement is not an issue even during an economic downturn.
What is Employee Engagement
Employee engagement is the emotional connection that an employee feels towards the organization, work, and team.
There are four levels of engaged employees:
- Highly engaged employees
- Moderately engaged employees
- Barely engaged employees
- Disengaged employees
Benefits of employee engagement
A lot of organizations give high priority to employee engagement. It leads to great results for the organization and the employees.
Here are some of the benefits for the organization in employee engagement:
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Lower Turnover
When employees are engaged, the employees are more satisfied. As The work environment team knows about what is going on in every employee’s mind.
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Reduced Employee Stress
Employee engagement is not only about communication, but sometimes it is about participating in recreational activities and cultural activities. This reduces the stress level of any employee.
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Decreased Burnout
Working under stress can often create employee burnout. Having some breaks and variety in work will reduce these burnouts.
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Better Customer Service
With any engagement programs, employees become more focused. This focus can lead to better communication with the customers. As a result, overall customer service will improve
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Safer Workplaces
Workplace safety is a major concern in Bangladesh. Communicating with everyone in the organization will help to focus on the issues in the organization.
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Decreased Mistake
One of the major facts in employee engagement is communication. With communication, each and everyone can find their lacings and mistakes.
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Better Employee Health
With stress relief and decreased burnout, employees’ mental health remains healthy. Productivity increases. The overall organizational mental health increases.
10 Strategies for Employee Engagement During Recession
During a recession, organizations and employees have a hard time working. However, organizations can take care of this with different strategies. Here are 10 strategies for employee engagement during the recession with HR software
Read More: 10 Creative Ways To Improve Employees’ Attendance at Work
1. Maintaining a Solid HR policy
The recession can last for a very long time. Nobody knows how long a recession will last. For that, the HR has to come up with a strong HR policy. The HR department of the organization must work on a remote work protocol, job descriptions, and performance appraisals. These HR activities should be based on the recession. With proper HR software in Bangladesh, strong HR policies can be achieved.
2. Employee Engagement
HRs has a lot of duties and responsibilities. One of them is keeping employees engaged and focused.
Engaged employees make a lot of difference in the organization. But employee engagement is built with strategies. Here are some key points to keep in mind:
- Giving employees autonomy with engagement
- Leadership transparency
- Team building with events
However, If your organization is looking for cost-effectiveness, it would be a wise choice if your organization is looking for cost-effectiveness.
3. Readjust Rewards and Remunerations
As we discussed, a recession can bring a critical situation. So employee engagement is certainly a challenge. But a straightforward and easy way to keep engaged is appropriation. Reworking the reward and remuneration policies can ease the engagement process.
However, in difficult times the organization must keep in mind that high expenses can be a burden.
4. Broader Hiring Pool
After the pandemic, many organizations adapted to the hybrid work environment. This hybrid work environment creates opportunities for remote employees. Remote employees can work from different countries and from other regions. In a situation of recession, having a workforce from different countries can be vital. This is because every country may not be in the same situation.
Remote work can have a compensation conflict. In order to avoid that, compensation benchmarking can be handy. There are dedicated HR software to recruit and manage these employees.
5. Manage Expenses
Cost reduction is one of the key points in managing an organization. The HR leaders have to make decisions on where to cut expenses. During an economic recession, cost-effectiveness becomes more crucial. The organization may face losses, difficulties in growth, and more problems can occur. Having fewer expenses can undoubtedly assist in achieving a long-term goal.
The organization must decide where to cut the expenses. Here are some points where the organization can reduce costs:
- Vendor and contractor
- Labor costs
- Voluntary costs
6. Monitor Cultural Environment
The cultural environment plays a vital role when it comes to employee engagement. A proper cultural environment can carry decent employee mental health.
The cultural environment can include different cultural programs, indoor activities, occasional outdoor activities, and more. However, monitoring and keeping quality are equally important. A dull cultural environment can not fulfill its goal.
In order to monitor the cultural environment, HRs can have feedback and reviews. Constant improvement to the programs can be helpful also.
7. More Communication
Communication becomes even more important during stressful times (like COVID). When employees feel they are wrong, they start guessing and soon the rumor mill will be in full swing. If your business is being hit by a recession, you can predict what the buzz will be like mass layoffs, offshoring, and drastic budget cuts. Small group conversations can prevent this buzz. And this method will make the air clear in the organization.
8. Consider employee well-being
Everyday companies are improving the skills of their employees. Organizations are actively investing in comprehensive health benefits. Some examples can be parental and maternity leave, insurance, etc.
Extracurricular activities such as functions, small events, and recreation week reduce stress. This will create a friendly environment, increase productivity and maintain employee well-being.
9. Focus on work and life balance
A healthy work-life balance creates a positive employee experience. Even in a time of recession, work-life balance is crucial. HR leaders can plan activities such as team building activities, entertainment hours, indoor games, and more to remove boredom in the work environment.
10. Encouraging employee feedback
Employee feedback is one of the most effective methods to find any solution. Feedback will tell you what kind of engagement will work in your work environment. Here are some of the feedback
- Have a Q and A session after any event
- Have a voting pool for any upcoming events
- Let employees choose recreation methods
- Have a small group to decide upon any organizational changes
Getting feedback will help the HR leaders to find the lackings. After finding the lackings, the organizing team can set up meetings and make necessary changes.
To Sum Up
Engagement during a recession is definitely a challenge. But with the right strategy, this can be dealt with.
To overcome challenges some HR software can play a vital role. Some HR software in Bangladesh is capable of doing much more than we can imagine. One of the best HR software in Bangladesh is PiHR. With PiHR, all sorts of HR strategies are easy to conduct.
To know more contact us.
